Goodbye
by BubblesFullbuster
Summary: She loved him through all the pain and heartbreak, but eventually discovers that escape is preferable to the agony of her reality.


**Hi guys!**

**So today I was feeling somewhat melancholy for no reason whatsoever, and decided to just let my fingers do the talking for me. I'm not even really sure where this came from – most of this has never happened to me before. I tried a writing style I've never used before and I really hope it's a success.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the marvellous world that is Fairy Tail**

**Warning: mention of sexual activity, and a whole lot of self-harm**

**-x-**

"I'm sorry. I can't do this anymore. It isn't what it once was, and it never will be again."

His stony eyes pierce your soul as he gazes into your eyes, rapidly filling with crystal droplets. He turns his back to you and you know that if you let him go now, you'll never have him again. Your arm lifts weakly, brushes against the smooth skin of his back. You grip his hand as tightly as you dare, flinching as he turns back to you.

"What did I… do?"

Your voice, soft as feathers floating on a gentle breeze. It trembles and shakes, your inner turmoil being released into the world. His eyes soften, and for a moment you think that he'll come back and everything will be the way it was, painting your world in a symphony of pinks and crimson. He grasps your hand and lowers it to your side with the care of one handling fragile china, gripping it for a second too long. Your fingers slide through his as he releases the bony twigs you call fingers.

"You've changed. You aren't the girl I fell in love with."

His words an icy shock, striking your heart, freezing you momentarily. You stare uncomprehendingly at him, focusing your gaze on the eyes that once whispered, "I love you" with a cacophony of layered emotions. Eyes that once revealed a pure soul, eyes that once revealed love, lust, passion, compassion, pain and joy. Eyes that once were open, now shuttered and hidden behind a mask of ice.

"I can change back. Tell me how you want me to be, and I'll be it."

Your voice, tinged with desperation, whines at him, pleading with him to hear the agony he's causing. He can hear it, you know he can, but he's shut himself off from you. For his own protection, or for yours. The reason doesn't matter: you want him to see you, to acknowledge the grief in your heart. He's drawn further away from you, standing with his back to you, closing you out. You feel the chill of separation race down your spine, and you know that it can only get worse from here on out.

"You laughed. You danced. You… felt. You've become a hollow shell, flitting between people and things, observing everything and saying nothing. You've lost what made you… you."

You stop to ponder his words, knowing deep down that he is right, that you have become hollow. Your soul had evacuated your body some months prior, releasing a cold corpse into the warm light of the living. Your emotions non-existent. The single constant in your life, him. And now he's leaving, abandoning you to your emptiness, leaving you to face the fate of the truly dead. No longer will you see his face light up when you enter the room, or fall when you blink blankly at his proclamations of love.

"You left me. You're leaving me again."

Your voice drops below his hearing. You're muttering to yourself, caught in the memories of the last time he ripped your heart out. It had been a dreary day much like this. The same atmosphere of heartbreak floated in the air, creating a melancholy aura that surrounded your friends, made them cry and hold each other close, a mutual comfort that wasn't offered in your relationship with the one you loved. He'd been standing too close to her, laughing and twirling her hair as he did almost every day. That day was different – intimate glances passed between them and you knew, without a doubt, that he'd broken the trust you'd freely given him. And later, leaving your home to see them walking hand in hand down the river, you'd let yourself cry.

"I made a mistake. You forgave me for it. Why do you always have to bring it up?"

He's angry now, his steel eyes glinting in the bright rays of sun filtering through the iron-dust clouds. You know he's right – you do always bring it up, but that's because you never forgave him. He'd left you in the dust that day, a faint memory smeared on the pristine façade that was his life. Things had continued as if you'd never happened; no more coy glances in hallways, no more fingers intertwining lovingly, no more pants and moans and groans and gasps of ecstasy, murmured affirmations of feelings once thought to be absolute and unshakeable. She had stolen all of that from you, and yet she tried to be your friend. She tried to apologise, passing it off as 'true love' and a random moment of weakness during a vulnerable time that led to something more. He ignored you. You hardened your heart, preparing yourself for a life of loneliness and misery that would end alone, with no-one to hold your hand as you draw your final breath of bitter oxygen.

"Because I can't forget it."

Their 'true love' had lasted only one minute grain of sand in the sands of time. After seemingly no time at all, he was at your doorway, presenting you with the white lilies that he knew were your favourite, every word an attempt to seduce you out of the concrete shell you'd encased yourself in. And, damn you, you'd fallen for it. Every fibre of your being ached to be held in his strong arms, every cell in your body roared with lust and desire in his presence. He swept you off your feet and danced along the ivory hallways with you, enticing you to trust yourself to his care, demanding that you forget the past and accept him for the loving man he appeared to be.

"It was one mistake, a long time ago. Just forget it."

But it wasn't one mistake. Before long, the woman who had stolen the heart of the man who already belonged to another had entered the picture again. She had squirmed her way into his mind and bed, and they both thought you wouldn't notice if they cleaned the bedrooms often, if they sprayed air freshener, if they avoided each other. Not all evidence could be erased, though – shirts reeking of sweet floral perfume and smeared with harlot-red lipstick found their way into wash baskets, and were discovered nestled cosily entwined with scraps of lace that you'd never be confident enough to wear. You pretended you didn't notice, because you wanted to feel the comfort and safety that came of being wrapped around his strong body at night. It drained you, though – knowing that the man you loved was loving another in your own bed, knowing that if you say anything, his fragile temper would explode and he'd leave you for her.

"We both know it was more than one. I pretended I didn't notice because I still… loved… you."

And you had loved him. You wanted, more than anything, to hold him close and have him wrap his arms around you, squeezing you to him as if he was trying to smother the life from you. You wanted to feel more than mere physical desire from him – you wanted to feel him bare his heart and soul as you had bared yours to him. You wanted to feel loved, wanted, needed. Soon enough, the urge to be his one and only love consumed you, smothered you, dragged you below the waves and drowned you. You started starving yourself, hoping he'd notice the effort you put into being as skinny as her. You cut stylish hairstyles and started dressing in more revealing clothes, desperate for him to see that you could be as sexy as her. When the pressure to be perfect became too much, vivid marks appeared in places rarely noticed by others: on hips, thighs and along legs, marks easily brushed off as the result of clumsiness or over-zealous kittens. Desperation oozed in copious amounts as he ignored your attempts to be perfect. You mimicked her cool attitude, showing no emotion, turning into a zombie. And, as it so often happens, your outward mask became the glue holding your insides together. You began to _feel_ less and less. You no longer felt butterflies when he looked at you, no longer felt your insides twist when he gazed steadily at you from under heavy eyelashes, no longer felt the twists and turns of joy that burst through your heart when he tangled his fingers with yours. All that mattered to you was being perfect enough for him; being the sole woman able to ensnare his attention and hold him a captive audience with every minute movement.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Of course he doesn't know – he notices nothing but speaks his opinions on everything. Continuing to mock you in front of your friends, calling you conservative and frumpy, despite the dress you wore that covered almost nothing. His friends had looked between the two of you, clearly seeing the chasm that had opened between you, seeing the smoky screen that obscured his vision and the rosy tint that entombed yours. "If that's conservative, I'd hate to see your revealing clothes…" His best friend had murmured that to you, as he kissed your cheek and said goodbye. You'd stared blankly at him, both loving and resenting the fact that he'd noticed your lover's blindness. He'd always been more observant than the dense one you had fallen in love with.

"I tried so hard… to be like her… but it wasn't enough."

Standing before a gilt-edged mirror, the ribs on your body protrude violently, casting shadows on your undernourished body. Your pallid skin appears mottled around the areas you hurt herself. Your hair has grown limp and bodiless from the constant heat and product applied to it. Despite this, you finally feel as though you are able to compete with the woman who ruined everything. Your bony hips feel like a smooth hourglass figure with no excess fat, your hair glistens in the bright light. You walk into the bedroom, naked as the day you were born, and offer your vulnerable self for his every desire. You prostrate yourself on the floor at his feet, begging him to use you, to make you feel alive again. He's been drinking. The empty bottle of vodka smashes near your head, and tiny daggers of glass rip their way through your delicate skin, sending ripples of crimson flowing down your arms and side. He wrenches his fingers through his hair and swear violently, stands up and stomps around you. He hurls words at you like torpedoes, accuses you of being suicidal and psychotic. You lie at his feet and stare blankly up at him, thinking that he is like unto an avenging angel, pure at heart and yet terrifying when enraged. The raw power crackling off of him makes you weak, makes you want to fall upon his feet and kiss them. He scowls at your vulnerable form on the floor and storms out of the room, swearing the whole way. You drag yourself to your feet and cocoon yourself in the duvet which still smells of his cologne, cologne he'd bought when he started seeing her again.

"You could never be like her."

He'd tumbled into the room at three in the morning, completely drunk and reeking of multiple perfumes. The vile stench of vomit clung to his shirt and you gagged as you undressed him. You threw the shirt into the bin, not bothering to try and clean it. Better to hide the memories, pack them away and pretend the ordeal had never happened. As you crawled into bed, he called you by her name and cradled you close to his chest, and you died inside as you realised he'd never done that with you.

He talked in his sleep. Mutterings about how he would win, about how pretty the sky is. Mostly he talked about her. He spoke sweetly to her, telling her that she was perfect. Telling her that he loves her.

You didn't sleep that night.

Or the next.

"I know. But I love you… so I tried…"

The next day, you'd both acted like the previous night hadn't happened – swept it under a rug with the dust and faded memories of your past. He no longer held you close while you slept, or looked deeply into your eyes. The echoes of what once had been faded, and new ones formed. You fought daily, him complaining that you never show emotion, and you blinking blankly at him. He ignored you for days on end, and you'd try everything you could think of to get his attention back. Your efforts were futile, and you found yourself drawing closer and closer to the point of no return, the point at which reality becomes a distant daydream and thought of the afterlife become frequent. You began to fantasise about your own personal heaven. He was there, and you were the only ones in the world. He loved you as much as you loved him. You spent days relaxing on beaches, and nights sharing in the passion of a love that existed nowhere else. The other woman had never existed, and your love had been unpolluted for as long as you could remember. Life was a daydream, reality a mere pause in the life you lived inside your head.

"You shouldn't have. You can only be yourself."

Your cuts became deeper and more haphazard, and more than once, he'd had to collect you from the hospital after you'd lost too much blood. Disgust etched itself permanently into his features and you shuddered each time you saw it, knowing that the unpleasant expression was only there because you were. You began to seriously contemplate taking your life – at least then, he would be happy. After all, that's the only thing you wanted for him. If you disappeared, he could be happy. And you, too, would be happy. You'd be in your afterlife, where you'd belong solely to each other, and nothing on earth could separate you.

"I wanted to be what you wanted me to be."

It had all led up to this day. You'd taken the razor-sharp splinters of a broken mirror and created neat pathways for the liquid life in your veins to travel down. The crimson trickles soon formed a puddle on the floor around you, and you stared in fascination at the light glinting off of the puddle. Lying upside down on the bed, your arms stretched beyond the edge of the bed, you could see his reflection as he stood in the doorway. He'd been watching the whole thing. His face dropped and he shook his head, swearing under his breath. As he drew closer, you could see the resignation on his face as he realised this would be the last time you could do this, the realisation that you were too far gone to be saved by emergency vehicles and blood transfusions. He knelt down beside your head and smoothed a lock of hair away from your eyes. A brief glimmer of compassion flared in his eyes as he gazed down at you, warming your chest in your final moments.

"Goodbye…"  
"Goodbye…"

You spoke in unison as you felt the final pump of blood escape your heart. Your rasping breath filled the room and finally, with a gasp of dying breath, your heart stopped. Your final vision was of his face, raven hair and black soulless eyes bent down to your face, pressing a kiss to your forehead. His smell filled your nostrils and you relaxed in the knowledge that you'd soon be with him forever.

"Goodbye… Juvia."

**-x-**

**Good god, I don't even know what that was. It made me sad. It made me cry while I wrote it and that's pathetic, because I'm the author and I shouldn't make myself cry. **

**Well… hope you enjoyed it despite the dark content. Drop me a review and let me know what you thought?**

**Bubbles xx**


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